Managing social images in naturalistic versus laboratory settings: Implications for understanding and studying self‐presentation

Abstract

Over the past 50 years, research on self-presentation has revealed a great deal about how people construct social images by managing the impressions that others form of them. However, inspection of the dominant research paradigms reveals that most researchers have not addressed central features of self-presentation as they occur in everyday life. Using a framework that identifies four primary features of everyday self-presentation, we compare and contrast the nature of naturalistic selfpresentation in everyday life with the ways in which self-presentation has been conceptualized, operationalized, and studied by researchers. We also discuss the implications of failing to incorporate naturalistic features of self-presentation into research contexts and offer recommendations for ways to enhance and expand research on self-presentation.

Children develop a veil of fairness.

“…In our experiments recipients were not present, allowing us to specifically investigate children's motivation to appear fair to third parties, an important step forward in understanding how children develop self-presentational concerns. This approach is more analogous to research in adult impression management, which is often focused on how individuals try to influence strangers' perceptions of them (Baumeister, 1982;Leary et al, 2011), and extends investigations of self-presentation in older children in domains other than fairness (Aloise-Young, 1993;Banerjee, 2002;Hill & Pillow, 2006).…”

“…In contrast, social signaling models propose that people's motivation underlying these same actions is a desire to demonstrate to others that they are fair, rather than a desire to actually be fair. People frequently engage in behaviors that allow them to appear nice, altruistic, and fair to others (Barclay & Willer, 2007;De Cremer & Sedikides, 2008;Kahn & Young, 1973;Latane, 1970;Milinski, Semmann, & Krambeck, 2002;Reis & Gruzen, 1976); such self-presentation or impression management is a ubiquitous aspect of social interaction (Baumeister, 1982;Leary, Allen, & Terry, 2011;Leary & Kowalski, 1990). Social Veil of Fairness 5 signaling models therefore predict that individuals should be less willing to pay costs in order to be fair if their unfair behavior is unlikely to be discovered by others (Andreoni & Bernheim, 2009;Dana et al, 2007) -that individuals do not prefer fair outcomes per se, but merely that others think that they are fair.…”

Social images of residential care: How children, youth and residential care institutions are portrayed?

“…These show how negative social images may affect individuals through processes of discrimination and negative interaction, processes involving the confirmation of expectations, the automatic activation of stereotypes and threats to identity (Major & O'Brien, 2005). Negative stereotypes may also have an indirect effect on individuals to the extent that they emerge in conjunction with discriminatory practices, and as such, have consequences in terms of social adjustment and integration (Leary, Allen, & Terry, 2011).…”

Emotional disclosure on social networking sites: The role of network structure and psychological needs

“…Need for emotional expression refers to the tendency to share emotions with others (Fridlund, 1991a(Fridlund, , 1991bFridlund, 1994;Rimé et al, 1991). Need for impression management refers to the motivation to convey a favorable self-image to others (Leary, Allen, & Terry, 2011;Leary & Kowalski, 1990;Martin, Leary, & Rejeski, 2000).…”